Unprecedented Quotes

• The catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented - and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

  Al Gore

  Threatening Us, Climate, Catastrophe

  Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, delivered 10 December 2007, Oslo, Norway

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• We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Reality, Accepting

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.

  John Green

  Inspirational, Hipster, Ideas

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.123, Penguin

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• ... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

  James A. Baldwin

  Miracle, Humans, Human Beings

  "The shot that echoes still" by James Baldwin, www.esquire.com. January 12, 2018.

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• America's leadership is essential. America's resources are vast. America's opportunities are unprecedented.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Opportunity, America, Essentials

  Ford, Gerald R. (1977). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1975”, p.572, Best Books on

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• You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, Thinking, People

  "Doom and glory of knowing who you are". Jane Howard, Life Magazine, Volume 54, No. 21 (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

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• Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.

  James D. Watson

  Science, Giving, Together

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• During true revival, thousands of lost people are suddenly swept into the Kingdom of God. Scenes of the lost coming to the Savior in great, and unprecedented numbers, are common.

  Henry Blackaby

  Numbers, People, Kingdoms

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• This unprecedented racism, bigotry and proto-fascist agenda that Donald Trump is trying to shove down America's throat has unleashed the resistance that will dethrone him.

  Tom Morello

  America, Racism, Trying

  Source: www.billboard.com

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• There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.

  Van Jones

  Russia, Blood, Europe

  Source: pen.org

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• This is a complicated time to govern in the world today because of so much going on and it's coming at us at such an unprecedented rate.

  Chuck Hagel

  World, Today, Complicated

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Nuclear, Fool

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• The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy.

  John F. Kennedy

  Loyalty, Responsibility, Technology

  "Special Message to the Congress on Federal Pay Reform". February 20, 1962.

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• Poor countries are being forced to deal with an unprecedented health crisis without the means to tackle it . Governments can only show how seriously they are taking this crisis by taking immediate action to provide four million extra health workers and to grant those in need access to affordable medicines.

  Annie Lennox

  Country, Health, Mean

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• Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

  Martin Buber

  Unique, Men, Tasks

  Martin Buber (2015). “Hasidism and Modern Man”, p.66, Princeton University Press

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• The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people - almost half of all humanity - to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.

  Kofi Annan

  People, Community, Humanity

  "Can Globalization Really Solve Our Problems?". Awake! Magazine, May 22, 2002.

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• My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.

  Barack Obama

  Government, Creating, Broken Promises

  "Obama's Opaque Presidency" by Shel Israel, www.forbes.com. November 22, 2013.

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• One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.

  Susan Sontag

  People, Society, Liberty

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors”, p.117, Penguin UK

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• Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Morning, Personality, Events

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Bend Sinister”, p.77, Penguin UK

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• The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

  Stephen Harper

  Military, Exercise, Order

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• I take great pride in having been able to overcome the Asian financial crisis and seeking the opportunities available to bring about an unprecedented growth in the economy

  Zhu Rongji

  Pride, Opportunity, Growth

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• Hitler had an unprecedented opportunity, such as no man will ever again be offered so easily, to create something entirely new. However, besides the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about matters economic, he cannot even fully understand his economic advisers. . . . His constant worry has ever been to keep himself in power. . . . He believes that he alone is a great man, and all others non-entities.

  Fritz Thyssen

  Believe, Opportunity, Men

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• We're talking about a prison-industrial complex. We're talking about a war on drugs that's generating unprecedented levels of incarcerated folk. We're talking about dilapidated housing. We're talking about joblessness and underemployment.

  Cornel West

  War, Talking, Drug

  "Cornel West Reconsiders President Obama". "Talk of the Nation" with Tony Cox, www.npr.org. August 2, 2010.

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• A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale-involving hundreds of millions of people-and may eventually be recognized as the principal cultural development of our age.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  People, Progress, Age

  Gregg Easterbrook (2003). “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse”, Random House Incorporated

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• Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision.

  Herman Kahn

  Technology, Issues, Decision

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